Big Beers

The summer is festival time for the Breckenridge area. Who knew? We aren’t ones to be “food” tourists. You know what we mean – you ask people to list places to see in the area and 99% of what they list are restaurants. We aren’t those types, but you add the word “festival” to the end of that? We’re game.

Attack of the Big Beers (and Grilled Cheese)

After the Frisco BBQ festival, we kind of expected it to be a madhouse, although we’d never been to Copper Mountain so didn’t know what to expect. “Big Beers” was defined as beers brewed in “high gravity”. Perhaps it was the location, perhaps it was the attendance, but it wasn’t nearly as warm and didn’t seem as packed. The vendor attendance was “meh”. Like the BBQ festival, you paid with tickets and had to guess how many you’d need.

View from the lift.

One word of advice – do NOT order tickets for anything off of your iPad. Dropdowns are tricky on the iPad, and you may accidentally purchase 60 more tickets than you intended. Because there weren’t a ton of vendors, there weren’t a lot of places to spend tickets. Luckily for us, we’re never ones to turn down an opportunity to purchase a coffee, t shirt or jacket, and local Copper Mountain vendors accepted tickets. We attempted to skip the lines for tickets by ordering online but had to pick tickets up at Will Call anyhow. Save yourself the accidental purchase and just go to the event and purchase there. It also helps to see what the festival is all about – we aren’t HUGE beer drinkers so there’s only so many samples you can drink.

Beautiful day!

One thing many locals have told us is that the area has really marketed the area as a Destination Wedding area. Low and behold, there was a wedding event at the top of the mountain. We saw it because we took the ski lift to catch some nice views (the lift was free to attendees of the festival…and the wedding). Admittedly we wondered why on earth anyone would wear a suit to a Big Beer & Grilled Cheese festival.

The wedding

Good luck kids!

Turns out the suit-wearers were going to the wedding. It turns out the bride and groom were named “Emily and Randy” as per the ski lift sign. Congrats Emily and Randy Whateveryourlastnameis!